A Speech I Gave at Toastmasters This Week

I joined a toast masters club about a month ago and gave my first speech at this weeks meeting. Below is a copy of the speech I gave. I titled it, The Epic Journey of Tim Schmidt and contains snippets of my life story... so far! I hope you enjoy it, and please don’t hesitate to comment and let me know what you think of it, blessings, Tim

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Good evening Mr. Toastmaster, fellow members and guests. I hope you all feel welcome here today. As mentioned in the introduction my name is Tim, and I would like to spend the next few minutes telling you a bit about myself. Because today’s theme has to do with story telling and fables, I want you to listen closely and then afterwards tell me when I was being a mother goose.

The first question people ask when they meet me is: what happened? How did you end up in the wheelchair? I usually respond by saying I was born. Wheelchair and all. That’s why my mother had a C-section when I was born. They couldn’t get the chair through the birth canal.

Okay, really, I was born with cerebral palsy which is the doctor’s way of saying I was born with brain damage. Because of this I use the wheelchair. But having this chair doesn’t mean I just sit there all day, these wheels take me places and I hope to share bit of my journey with you here today.

My fondest memories start at the age of 15 when I discovered a passion for cooking. Earning top marks in foods class filled my head with dreams of going to SAIT and being a chef. Sadly, I never did fullfill that dream. I may not be the sharpest knife in the kitchen but I can still make an orgasmic chicken soup and turn chocolate haters into chocoholics.

my plans for going to SAIT changed when I attempted suicide at 19.  After this I made a life altering decision to go to Bible College and be a youth pastor. It was here that I earned the nickname globe trotter as I embraced a new passion for travelling. If I wasn’t in class I was en route.

For 5 months in 2002 I juggled school work while travelling to the following places:

the country of Belize, Ottawa Ontario, great falls, Montana, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Edmonton, red deer, Grande Prairie, Pine Lake, Taber, and Regina Saskatchewan. I’ve even seen the towers of Isengard and Mount Doom. The last stamp in my passport was in 2005 when I traveled to Poland for 2 weeks.

I think it goes without saying, that after that I cooled my jets, stayed home, and studied. I graduated in 2009 with a bachelor of religious education and since then, my adventure continues. I moved out of my parent’s house, and into a one bedroom apartment in Inglewood. I help lead a small church in McKenzie town and am 2 thirds of the way through editing my first book.

I still like to travel and on Boxing Day in 2009 I took the greyhound to Hamilton Ontario and back. Never do that! That was a LOOOONG trip. That’s 2 and a half days one way.  this past summer I was a counellor at a camp for people with disabilties and a guest speaker at camp Chestermere in august.

Mr toastmaster, fellow members and guests, there you have it. I hope you’ve enjoyed my trip down memory lane and that I have been a good host. there is more to my life then what I’ve shared here today and I look forward to sharing it with you in the days to come. I also hope that I have kept your interest and you’ve been able to pick out my fables.